The present invention is concerned with a thermoplastic film-coated fabric, more particularly with a thermoplastic film-coated fiber material which is well suited for use in incontinence control garments, surgical gowns, sheets, dressings and the like as well as in feminine hygiene products, and to a method for the manufacture of such thermoplastic-coated fabrics.
The coating of thermoplastic films on fiber materials, including non-woven synthetic fiber materials, is known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,105 discloses a stablized absorbent rayon web which may constitute a continuous filament, spun-bonded web or an air-laid, wet-laid or carded web of rayon fibers of staple length or longer into which a thermoplastic web having open areas is melted from the bottom surface thereof to a depth of about 10 to 40% of the depth of the web. A number of thermoplastic films including, among others, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester and ethylene methyl acrylate are disclosed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,367,112 discloses a biaxially oriented polypropylene film stated to exhibit improved heat-seal strength and good optical clarity characterized by having on at least one surface thereof a continuous coating of a copolymer of ethylene and methyl acrylate. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,895 discloses that ethylene acrylic acid copolymers or ethylene-acrylic acid ester copolymers such as ethylene/ethyl acrylate and ethylene/methyl acrylate may be used as extrusion coatings on transparent, polymeric webs such as oriented polypropylene, cellophane, polyesters, nylon, etc. in order to impart transparency to the multi-layered film resulting from the process. In a similar vein, U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,937 discloses that a variety of somewhat polar synthetic thermoplastic polymers such as random copolymers of ethylene with acrylic or methacrylic acid are known to exhibit reasonably good adhesion to a variety of metallic and nonmetallic substrates.